CES 2012: Hands on with the Motorola Droid Maxx

Earlier this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, Motorola unveiled the latest member of its RAZR family of cellphones, the Droid RAZR Maxx, which the company says can deliver up to a whopping 21.5 hours of continuous talk time.

"That's not you make a few calls, hang up for a bit and then make some more calls," a rep told me about the phone, which has a 3300 mAh lithium ion battery (the current RAZR comes with a 1780 mAh Li Ion battery). "That is somehow you and your friend finding something to talk about for 21.5 hours straight."

But given the history of long-life batteries for cellphones, one's instinct might be to assume this phone would be noticeably heavier than a standard device. And it is about 20 grams heavier than the current Droid RAZR. It actually weighs almost exactly the same as Motorola's Atrix 2, which I was able to confirm when I got my greedy little hands on the Maxx. And, going by the specs on the Apple site, the Maxx is only 5 grams heavier than the iPhone 4S

It's also about 2mm thicker than the current generation of the RAZR, but slightly slimmer -- again according to the numbers provided by both companies, as I didn't want to worry about slipping my calipers past airport security -- than the iPhone 4S.

As for the claims of battery endurance -- in addition to the 21.5 hours of talk time, they claim around 10 hours of continuous texting, and the ability to watch up to around 8 full-length movies (from the phone's memory; not streaming), and 380 hours of idle time, before needing a recharge -- there is no way to do that at CES, even in the semi-privacy of the Motorola press area. But you can rest assured that the testers here at Consumer Reports will be putting these claims to the test once the phone hits the market later this year.

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—Chris Morran